Websites

Websites are designed to advertise a product, and they are essential when promoting recently released films.

They are judged in 5 categories:

Functionality

• Access - how easy it is to get what you want?
• Speed - how compact is your web design?
• Legality - Copyright and law-awareness of boundaries

Design

• Typography - font styles and the range of fonts for different information
• Artistry - needs to suggest the genre
• User friendliness - the ease of use, simple and straightforward links
• Clarity - easily read and followed
• Aesthetics - colour harmonies and relations to genre of film

Content

• Purpose - freebies, merchandise etc.
• Fan base - link to downloads and memorabilia
• Information process - need synopses to link to film and give people a taste of the film to come
• Verbal expression - quality of grammar
• Attention to detail - create a unified, not dysfunctional website, where the sound links don't sound intrusive

Originality

• Quality of predictive research - find out what people like from existing websites

Overall effectiveness

• Where the strengths lie

We were able to expand this and find out what our media class thought about existing websites - the strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths

• Search box
• Clear headings and links
• Special visual effects
• Colour which relates to the genre
• Connotations and links to genre through imagery and animation
• A user friendly page

Weaknesses

• Blocked links
• No imagery
• Not user friendly
• Pop-ups
• When the trailer starts automatically
• An introduction
• Advertisements
• Sounds from other websites
• Not enough links - specifically a 'home' link
• The design doesn't fit on to a computer screen, which requires the user to scroll horizontally.